Webmaster Hardware Forum

Is there really much of a difference between 10/100 Ethernet and 1000 Ethernet? We only have half a dozen computers on network, but we do have a huge share network attached storage drive system that gets a fair amount of work. I am wondering if there is really that much of a diff to warrant the up grade?

On the serious side, running NAS can be a bandwidth hog so I'd say upgrading may be worthwhile. However, think about the state of your cabling as performance can be seriously hampered by cabling issues (interference, degraded copper, poorly wired plugs etc...)

Upgrading to optical may be a step too far for your needs.

ADDED

Anyone wanting to get an idea of how cabling/interference may be the issue on your network should pick up the first part of the Cisco CCNA coursework. It covers the basics that often cause issues, meaning you can make sure you are making the best of what you have before upgrading.

Even for a one-man operation the price of gigabit ethernet has one of the better benefit to cost ratios around. I run four boxes with twin 500G NAS drives. The difference in transfer times is as centime says, "staggering", can even feel it in large print jobs. The biggest cost is probably upgrading the NAS. For my humble purposes I picked a gigabit twin enclosure so I wouldn't be constrained by disk size, just pop in larger ones if I ever need to.

Well, after studying it more today, I don;t think the price diff is all that great to worry too much about it. I was surprised at how cheap I could get a hub and a card these days. I am going to give it a shot and isolate just my box, the nas, and the hub from the rest of the network. Ya, I'm gonna get a draftN linksys too and have a go with that and a card on my laptop that goes back and forth to work. That should give me a good test. I figure I can get it all done for under $300 - which is respectable.

> large nas

I went with a 2 terabyte Buffalo tera station. It is 10/100/1000 out of the box. We have it in parity mode which gives about 1.5tb usable space. You can plug in up to 4 usb drives for expansion. That's plenty of space for us at the present.